opinion

Some months ago I recall reading about the concept of beeping, a method used to get someone to call you back. According to Wikipedia, it is a commonly employed by the cash strapped when they have little of no mobile credit or cannot afford the price of a call. The less well off  makes a call, waits for a ring tone and quickly hangs up before the recipient answers.

Beeping as a phenomenon is common is countries in Africa where the rule is that the person who is perceived to be better off pays for the price of the call. To get the attention of this person, you beep them and they will call you back.

In some cases as I found out when in eastern Europe last month, the number of beeps can mean different things and depending on the sequence of calls can signal different message. For example, a friend of mine normally picks up his work colleagues on his way to work. To indicate his availability, he beeps them. Some days when he is unavailable, he doesn't call with a set time period.

This prompts his friends to beep another work mate to indicate his unavailability and their need for a lift. Sounds complicated, but for my friends it a simple way to communicate without having to make a call. More importantly, it doesn't cost them a cent.

For the mobile phone companies, beeping costs. Packets to initiate the call are sent over their networks and based on the agreement between network providers, these calls have to be paid for. As they cannot bill the person initiating the call as the call is unanswered, the initiators mobile network is left to pick up the bill.

For more on beeping see Jonathon Donner's excellent article: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donner.html
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeping